Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog. Robert Blatchford
do with "environment"; the second is part of heredity. One we get from our fellow-men, the other from our ancestors.
Here let us pause to look into that much-preached-of "mystery" of the "dual consciousness," or "double-self."
We all know that men often do things which they know to be wrong. When we halt between the desire to do a thing, and the feeling that we ought not to do it, we seem to have two minds within us, and these two minds dispute about the decision.
What is this "mysterious" double-self? It is nothing but the contest between heredity and environment; and is not mysterious at all.
Heredity is very old. It reaches back, to the beasts. It passes on to us, generation after generation, for millions of years, certain instincts, impulses, or desires of the beast.
Environment is new. It begins at the cradle. It prints upon us certain lessons of right and wrong. It tells us that we ought not to do certain things.
But the desire to do those things is part of our heredity. It is in our blood. It is persistent, turbulent, powerful. It rises up suddenly, with a glare and a snarl, like a wild beast in its lair. And at the sound of its roar, and the flame of its lambent eyes, and the feel of its fiery breath, memory lifts its voice and hand, and repeats the well-learned lesson with its "shall-nots."
We are told that the animal impulses dwell in the "hind brain," and that morals and thought dwell in the "fore brain." The "dual personality," then, the "double-self," consists of the two halves of the brain; and the dispute between passion and reason, or between desire and morality, is a conflict between the lower man and the higher; between the old Adam and the new.
But it is also, to a great extent, a conflict between the average man and the hero, or leader.
We inherit the roots of morality, that is ta say, the "social instincts," or impulses of unselfish thoughts for others, from the sociable animals. But what we call "ethics," the rules or laws of moral conduct, have been slowly built up by human teachers. These teachers have been men with a special genius for morals. They have made codes of morals higher than the nature of the average man can reach.
But the average man has been taught these codes of morals in his childhood, and has grown up in unquestioning respect for them.
So when his baser nature prompts him to an act, and his memory repeats the moral lesson it has learnt, we have the nature of the average man confronted by the teaching of the superior or more highly moral man.
And there is naturally a conflict between the desire to do evil, and the knowledge of what things are good. It is not easy for Wat Tyler, Corporal Trim, or Sir John Falstaff to follow the moral lines laid down by such men as Buddha, Seneca, or Socrates. Sir John knows the value of temperance; but he has a potent love of sack. Wat knows that it is good for a man to govern his temper; but he is a choleric subject, and "hefty" with a hammer. There was a lot of human nature in the shipwright, who being reminded that St. Paul said a man was better single, retorted that "St. Paul wasn't a North Shields man."
We know very well that some qualities may make either for good or bad. Strength, ability, courage, emulation, may go to the making of a great hero, or a great criminal..
If a man's bent, or teaching, be good, he will do better, if it be evil he will do worse by reason of his talents, his daring, or his resolution.
Dirt has been defined as "matter in the wrong place": badness might be often defined as goodness misapplied. Courage ill-directed is foolhardiness; caution in excess is cowardice; firmness overstrained is obstinacy.
Many of our inherited qualities are what we call "potentialities": they are "possibilities," capabilities, strong, or potential for good or evil.
Love of praise may drive a man to seek fame as a philanthropist, a tyrant, a discoverer, or a train-robber.
Love of adventure and love of fame had as much to do with the exploits of Gaude Duval and Morgan, the buccaneer, as with those of Drake or Clive.
Nelson was as keen for fame as Buonaparte: but the Englishman loved his country; the Corsican himself.
Doubtless Torquemada had as much religious zeal as St. Francis; but the one breathed curses, the other blessings.
Pugnacity is good when used against tyranny or wrong; it is bad when used against liberty or right.
Men of brilliant parts have failed for lack of industry or judgment. Men of noble qualities have gone to ruin because of some inborn weakness, or bias towards vice. Our minds "are of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." Many of life's most tragic human failures have been "sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh." Ophelia was not the first woman, nor the last by many millions, to perish through reaching for flowers that grow aslant the brook. If virtue is often cowardice, frailty is often love; and the words of Laertes to the "churlish priest" might frequently be spoken for some poor "Bottom Dog" in reproach of the unjust censure of a Pharisee: "a ministering angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling."
We must remember, then, that the happiness or unhappiness of our nature depends not so much upon any special quality as upon the general balance of the whole.
Poor Oscar Wilde had many fine qualities, but his egotism, his vicious taint, and, perhaps, his unfortunate surroundings, drove him to shipwreck, with all his golden talents aboard. Every day noble ships run upon the rocks; every day brave pennons go down in the press of the battle, and are trampled in the blood and dust; every day lackeys ride in triumph, and princes slave on the galleys; every day the sweet buds go to the swine-trough, and the gay and fair young children to shame or the jail.
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